


Lines

by 43degrees



Category: Methyl Ethel (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Band Fic, Emotional Abuse, F/M, M/M, RPF, competition with myself for how many lines metaphors i can fit into one fic, headcanons galore, i draw the line at abundant, oh what's that? a multi chapter fic for a relatively unknown australian band? don't mind if i do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-08-30 04:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16757392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/43degrees/pseuds/43degrees
Summary: This began as an attempt at a 5+1 thing which became a thing of its own... Basically Jake kisses various people and he has a lot of Feelings.





	1. Brian

**Author's Note:**

> i guess since this fic starts in 2004, as per mid 2000s fanfic tradition it's appropriate to note that I have not intended any offence to those involved nor do I claim to know these people irl. this is all just headcanons and guestimates, with a dash of projection. *peace emoji*

**(2004)**

 

Jake sits on the desk in the music room and listens to Brian take up Dogs by Pink Floyd.

“Dad taught me two of the guitar solos,” Brian tells him, sitting cross legged on the floor.

The song plays over the stereo and the electric guitar blasts out of the adjacent speakers, drowning out the sound of the brass orchestra playing in the hall beyond the modern music room. Jake sings along but his mind wanders away from Brian impressively slinging one solo to his chase the other day. How they’d chased him across the grounds and across the oval and how he’d only been able to lose them by scrambling up a big tree. He’d climbed up so fast that they didn’t know where he went. He’d sat on a high bough and watched the boys argue in the bed of roots and watched them disperse in search for him.

He was up there for hours. Long enough to watch where the bruises over his arms and shoulders turned from pink to violet. He’ll probably never be able to drink out of that bubbler again. But the bubbler’s not the target, it’s him. He feels alone. In this school, in this town. Brian makes him not feel like that. They’re in every class together, so that helps, but even when he’s not around, Jake still thinks of Brian. Before and after school, even every wednesday morning when all the boys file into the chapel and fill the pews in order of their last names. Jake reads from the bible verbatim but his mind is elsewhere, under God’s eye, watching his mind wander out in the Big Dry where the hallowed men wander and where Brian stands on the other side of the river styx, happy and singing and out of reach.

His mother made him feel weaker than being slammed into a bubbler and his dad told him he should fight back, but he can’t. He can’t ever make the first move. Brian’s fingers work the frets and he gets to his feet and throws his head back and forth like a true rock star. His long black hair flips around his neck and Jake watches the fine strands fall around the nape of Brian’s school shirt, unbuttoned two buttons down. Jake slides off the desk, drawn to his friend who kneels once more and finishes the seventeen minute song on his knees.

The last note hangs in the air. The brass rehearsals filling the gaps. Brian looks up and Jake looks down, and he can’t work out if he wants to be Brian or if he wants to be all over him. If he wants to inhibit Brian’s body and move the way he does and talk the way he does or if he wants to kiss every inch of Brian. And there’s only one that he can do and only one that he won’t do and it’s an accident or the energy between them and nothing to do with courage or spontaneity when Jake cups his hands around Brian’s cheeks and kisses him on the lips.

He’s never kissed anyone before. It doesn’t go so well.

Brian recoils, taking a long step back and dropping his electric guitar while he’s at it. He snatches it off the carpet and hugs it close and he speaks with venom on his tongue. “Don’t tell anyone about this! I don’t want to get kicked out of school! Do you know how hard it was for my Dad to get me into Aquinas??”

Brian keeps talking and making accusations and Jake doesn’t know what to do. Paralysed on the carpet. Motionless to the motions of a wild teenager hurricaning out of the room.

After a sleepless night, Jake goes to school with his uniform iron pressed and tight and Brian acts like what they did the day before had never happened. It’s maybe for the best. Jake’s not very good at talking, afraid about what’ll come out of his mouth if he’s an uninhibited as Brian had allowed to be.


	2. Amber

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reiterating the no offence intended spiel. and look, i would die for amber, ok?

**(2008)**

 

He can’t listen to this anymore. He turns his back on his mother. And she -- in front of her husband, her daughter, and her son’s shaking back -- tries to twist him around with her words. Jake snatches his bag from beside the door, rips it open to make sure his cassette player is inside, and then pushes out the front door. The sound of the door closing is not loud enough to silence his mother’s vitriol.

He can hear her voice emanate through the glass windows as he stomps down the pebble pathway. Her words make incisions either side of the notches in his spine, slicing over the marks in his flesh that he thought had finally healed.

He pulls his bag around on his front and plucks out his cassette tape and headphones and keeps marching forward, blind to where he’s going as he fumbles with untangling the cord. The pebbles beneath his shoes finish where the pathway joins to the sidewalk that leads down the tree covered street, forcing him to stop and untangle the headphones in case he trips on the uneven concrete.

He hooks his fingers in the loops in the cord and yanks.

 _I’m the jerk?_ Jake hisses to himself, wary of his sound and his way of moving even outside of the confines of his parental home. All church-goers here in this neat, leafy neighbourhood.  _I’M THE JERK?!_

He gives up on undoing the knots, submitting to slapping the headphones over his ears and leaving the cassette player to dangle over his chest by the messy tangle of black cord. Leaves scuttle across the light dappled road, a gentle breeze pushes on the last leg so that the dry leaves gust into the gutter. Jake hits Play and lets his music enrapture him.

The cassette player bumps against his sternum with each step. His footing becomes harder when the sun bears brighter, when the shade from the tree covered sidewalk disappears at the stretch of newly developed houses in Dalkeith. Their grassy front yards stretch back to meet glistening white mansions, all dry and glossy in comparison to the wet and woody mid 20th century architecture characteristic of the older parts of the suburb. He steam rolls past them, hoping his mother’s friends aren’t watching from their ceiling to floor windows.

Sometimes Jake thinks he should record the things his mother says to him, just to prove… but he doesn’t like getting mad, doesn’t like to raise his voice except in a studio or on stage where his heartfelt words are not ignored.

He keeps walking. The music blaring and conquering his thoughts. It quietens his anger but his whole body shakes because of it, a trade-off he’s forced to accept until the movement and the sounds are enough to outweigh the dark thoughts that whisper the rounds behind lyrics.

He takes a shortcut down a gravel laneway and comes out near the water. A path follows the Swan River around to the edges of the university grounds, at which point his tape ends. He sits on a large rock that looks out onto the water. There’s someone steadily leaf blowing down the path. A loud, abrasive noise against the backdrop of the gentle water. The smell of shorn grass flitting into the air. He takes his cassette player into his lap, now that his fingers have stopped shaking, and properly untangles the headphone cord.

He wishes she would just…

A cruise ship glides across the water, sending waves which fill the footprints on the yellow sand. He pops the tape out and turns it over, clacking the cover back in place and his headphones back over his ears. He looks back at the university grounds where he’ll have to be on his next day of class. Thankfully it’s too early for anyone to be on campus. He’s not in the right headspace to exchange casual chit chat with anyone right now. But his choice of rest along a popular morning stroll route creates a surge of paranoia, worried that he may run into someone that he knows or who may know him via his parents, so he hits play and gets a move on.

The sun steadily rises higher. The smell of a mix of salt and freshwater blankets his sense of smell, and he starts to feel the heat of the day cling to his skin. After passing the university and Kings Park, he keeps to Swan River and skirts around the water until the footbridge joins the Causeway. He contemplates following the river, but knows he’ll run a greater risk at running into someone with the morning having got on a bit, so he takes the unpopular footpath along the Causeway. And further on, further still, until before he knows it, he’s at Amber’s.

He’s meant to hang out with her later but he’s early. Hours early. He hovers in front of the short iron gate. The white paint over it is sunburned and peeling. All he can hear is his music but something makes him look up and he spots Amber hanging over her windowsill, a fruit in one hand and the other waving at him. He pulls his headphones down around his neck.  

“Jake, mm, funny seeing you here,” She says, her mouth full of mandarin. She throws the peel in the garden bed beneath the window before trotting inside to open the front door for him.

Jake pushes through the creaky gate and walks up the couple of stairs that lead to her porch. The door opens just when he steps onto the wood. She throws her arms around him and gives him a kiss on the cheek. He hugs her back but it’s the dark hallway that sees how wanly he smiles.

“We can’t play just yet,” she says, pulling back. “Nick’s still sleeping.”

Jake nods. He paces on her porch, the curved wood easing down under his weight, and the headphones around his neck still playing music.

Amber watches him. “Wanna go to the beach?”

He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that he’s just walked 20 km but he also wouldn’t mind not slowing down.

“Sounds good.”

“Just let me chuck on my cossies.”

Jake jumps off the porch and walks around her garden while she changes. Tiny birds duck in and out of bushes, their small yellow beaks working around the spiky leaves that defend the plants. Amber’s garden is so different to his mother’s. His mother spent a fortune hiring a landscape architect from Japan to redesign her garden to upstage her friends in their pristine West Perth mansions. Halfway through Jake’s childhood, the thick bushland that filled his backyard transformed into a hyper-green, meticulously trimmed garden. Every potted plant had its place, every pebble to stay in the line of the path, no trees were to be climbed and spaces that were once free became out of bounds.

Amber’s could not be more different. It’s wild and unruly, and full of brown and yellow and red natives that swamp into every inch of space. Jake knows that Amber’s battling with keeping things from overgrowing but there’s something so liberating about moving through the slim spaces between bushes. He finds the twigs scratching his skin and the seeds catching on his clothes more welcoming than the ways his mother demarcated his space which was once boundless. As if the overgrowth and the mess and the weeds in the front yard of his friend’s rental house contains all the kindness and warmth that his mother has pruned away in favour of order, and the orders of God.

Amber trots out of her house with her swimmers on and a towel over her shoulder. She shuffles down into the garden and hands Jake a bottle of water, which he guzzles empty. It makes her laugh, and her smile persists when she brushes pollen out of Jake’s hair.

When Jake gasps for air, Amber takes the empty bottle from him and goes to fill it up at the garden tap. She brings it back and he drinks it down halfway, then holds the bottle and stands in the sun, staring off at a magpie that sits on the crooked gutter that dips around the roof of Amber’s house. The cold inside him, the heat close around him. A long outro to a song beats to a slow submission. His legs ache and his feet sweat in his shoes, but the discomfort is nothing in comparison to what he feels when he lets the world stand still.

A hand on his elbow. “You okay?”

Jake tears his eyes away from the magpie and looks down at Amber. “Yeah, just thirsty.”

“Alright.” She goes back to the tap and leans over to refill the bottle for a third time. She stands up straight, water dripping onto her bare, tan knees. “Want some sunscreen too?”

“Yeah, better.”

“Bit late, maybe. You look white fella red,” She laughs again.

She runs inside anyway. When he switches off his music and folds the headphones away, he can hear the balls of her feet hitting the hardwood floors inside the house. She comes out with sunscreen which they apply as they walk, stopping every so often to get the hard-to-reach places. The walk to the beach takes a toll on him. More uphill than his route around the river mouth had been. He takes it slower. Listens to the stories Amber tells him about Nick and Sam and the rest of their mutual friends.

“Jake!!”

Relapsed reaction time when a 4WD with a yacht attached rumbles down the road and almost hits him -- if Amber hadn’t pulled him back. Her fist in the back of his loose t-shirt, the fabric choking his throat. The car honks and as the vehicle and the boat in tow passes, the asphalt vibrates up through his feet and into his hip bones.

Amber hooks her arm around his since that incident. Quiet now. All storied out or only the mundane left not to tell. They reach the stairs down to the beach and she lets go now to fly down the wooden stairs, her brown hair whistling out behind her and green towel flapping too. He takes his time down. By the time he reaches the bottom, she’s already let the sea take her whole. He takes his shoes and socks off and walks across the hot sand and bolts to the damp sand as fast as he can, once he can no longer pretend that his soles don’t burn.

He tucks his shirt and his cassette player into his bag and leaves it and his shoes with Amber’s things and then goes to wade into the water with just his shorts and undies on. Amber’s shooting through the ocean waves like she’s always meant to be there. Like she was born in it, made from the salt and the water and the turn in the tide. Jake goes in to his waist then dives under and finds a spot to float in where the waves can jostle him about.

The salt water is meant to heal, his exteriors at least. He still aches in his muscles, in his heart. Still oscillates his arms and legs to keep himself afloat, to keep himself from drowning.

“Thought you had a family lunch on today?” Amber says, emerging from the water beside him. Her hair’s flattened and tangled from the swim, her eyes glassy and bright in the late morning sunlight.

“Yeah…”

“Not going?”

“Dunno, maybe.”

“You’re crap at conversation today, Jake.” She nudges her toes into Jake’s side and pushes away from him, turning over onto her stomach.

He smiles and it comes more naturally this time. “Yeah sorry.”

“Wanna go rockpooling?”

“Yep.”

Amber glides out of the water, emerging with her hair swinging down to the small of her back and very unglamorously stepping out of the clutch of seaweed. She beckons him over. He pulls himself out of the tousle of the waves and the salty sea breeze whistles in his ears and licks along the crust of his exposed wounds, whittles him raw to the bone. Sand sticks to his feet as he goes to join Amber climbing over the dark rocks that curve around the cliffside.

Once the ridge is mounted, they walk out onto flats where the layers of rock lay exposed to the sun, peeling away like decomposing flesh. Little snails weave through the sand, leaving patterns across the rocks. Tiny shells wear down the dead skin on Jake’s feet, and even tiner rocks dig into the blisters, and he carries on to trapeze-walk over rock ridges where water gushes in between. Water fills a large hole from the underneath, and the swell of a wave overfills it, spills water to the next two pools and disturbs a school of fish.

“Woah! Look at this Jakey.” Amber squats over a rock pool, pointing at a crab that scuttles under the lip of a submerged rock.

“It’s pretty good,” Jake says, squatting down to have a look.

Still squatting, Amber bumps into his side. “I’ll find something more impressive.”

They keep walking around the rockpools, peering into the homes of unsuspecting creatures and raising their arms up in the air to let the spray of the crashing waves gust through their clothes and their hair and the wind blows through their ears and noses and dries out their mouths. They stick their feet into still, warm pools and soak their feet in fresh, cool pools and then move back around to the ridge before the beach where they stare up at the great cliffs that loom over them and scale back down the ridge before the tide comes in and traps them on the rocks.

She takes him by the hand, secure and soft and she does this sometimes. Amber’s always been affectionate. Always loves, with such a big heart. And under the shade of the precipice where yellow signs warn people for falling rocks, they witness two lizards plop down from the growth overhead and wrestle in the sand by their aching feet. Jake leans against the cliff face, the rock fraying his denim shorts and they watch the lizards part ways. Amber turns to him, smiles so wide. He’s so tired. Weathered and eary and raw. And he’s finally stopped moving and the wind howls in his ears and moves his hair to one side and he sees that the lizards leave lines in the sand from their tails.

He kisses her, takes in her breathy chuckle and with their lips joined and the faint taste of citrus, he tries to imagine a life with her.  Imagines it happy, at first. Beach trips and large dinners and two blue eyed little girls who they take on bush walks and bathe in the gentle waters of creeks and who they hold in their arms as they, as a family,  look down on the vast valleys where it’s all overgrown and where good people don’t walk or burn anymore.

But the happiness goes downhill, the fires that ought to happen go alight and rage on at intensities higher than the scales can predict and he knows it’s because he can’t love her on the same level she needs to be loved. That’s why they’ve never dated. He loves, he has loved people before, but he doesn’t know how to make himself love anymore than he loves Amber. There’s a limit and he’s looked at the lines a thousand times before to make sure those limitations are not the lines of reptiles who fought and gave up, and ran the opposite ways. But maybe they didn’t fall, maybe they were pushed. Orchestrated by the hand of someone, of his mother, who raked the sand with her own hands to hide the evidence of the demarcations she inscribed into his heart.

Amber’s smile splinters the kiss and she breaks away to laugh, turns back only to kiss his forehead. She holds his gaze. Her two blue eyes are their daughters and Jake watches the shapes of their imagined bodies float above the rocks behind Amber. But they go transparent, like glass, and when Amber turns around as if to catch them in sight, their fragile bodies shatter against the wet rocks.

The shards will take too much time to become something as beautiful as seashells. By that time, Amber will be old and she’ll go out on this beach with someone else in hand and she’ll unknowingly collect those shells and tuck them into her pockets. And she will never know what kind of sad life she could have had with Jake except in the imperfection of the forms of the shells, where pieces have broken off and become forgotten, like the moment she thought Jake might want to be with her. Hope which crumbles by the hands of the sea, or a natural, predictable process that Amber should have known from the start.


	3. Strangers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no offence intended to anyone involved~~ (p.s. if jake's mum is actually a nice person, i'm v sorry but this is just FanFiction afterall.)

**(2011)**

 

I have some exciting news!

-

-

Please answer your phone.

-

Why won’t you answer my calls? .

-

-

(You have 8 missed calls)

-

It is not going to reflect well on me if you don’t show up when I told this nice young girl you would meet her. You don’t want to disappoint me, do you?

-

-

Jacob!

 

*

 

A hot day breathes into a hot night and yet an impressive bonfire goes up in the back paddock. Jake’s sister’s friend had reportedly harvested fuel from across his parents’ property over the last few months to be used for this very night. Regardless of the night doing little to cool off the day, the bonfire is a feature not to leave untouched as its extravagance had been boasted about for several preceding weeks, so much so that Jake’s sister had been banned from attending the party. Jake had agreed to be her chaperone, when she’d asked, though he was surprised because she is generally quite responsible.

Before jumping out of the car, she had made it clear to him that he wasn’t to interact with any of her friends, and to not tell Mum about this either. He was fine with that, really, he hadn’t planned on talking to her about anything at all. He suspected that his mother knew something as she continued to pester him with phone calls and texts, each left unanswered on Jake’s part, but which only contributed to his growing anxiety about being at the party at all. He’d already felt strange about arriving so early, before the sun had even set. And the small collection of teenagers he’d seen were, well, teenagers. Not his exact crowd whether his sister permitted him to socialise or not.

So he’s left to pass the time in front of branches and kindling amassed in a giganteus pyramid. By the time the lighting of the bonfire occurs, he’s surprised by how much of a large crowd is attracted, but once the heat begins to build, most party goers slink back to the refuge of the unnatural light cast by the homestead. Jake remains at the foot of the bonfire, seated on a milk crate with a glass of wine in hand. He tries not to think about anything, tries earnestly to only think about the ends of the flames flick ash into the night sky. The little flecks of ash burn against the cloud blanketed sky, the orange glow as ephemeral stars the burst and burn and disappear into the dark of the night too rapidly to be taken as reliable replacements for the constellations that hide behind the clouds.

He doesn’t go to many parties anymore. He wasn’t allowed to when he lived with his parents. His sister seems to have it a little easier, only sometimes she’s limited as much as he was. At least she’s allowed to have birthday parties. He hadn’t had a birthday party of his own since he was thirteen, so when he moved in with Chris, he’d attended and hosted quite a few. Too many, maybe, or wasn’t his thing. Got tired of it quick. Sought the solace and the cleanliness of a two person household. Still, he wished he had thrown a party at his parent’s home that one time he was able to convince his parents to go to Injidup without him. He never much liked it there, or rather, he didn’t like having to go there with his family. The area itself is gorgeous. His family… not so much. That blissful holiday was the only time he was able to get his parental home to himself before he moved out. The first and the last time. He’d had to lie that he had assignments to do, a lie which fell through upon his mother’s return. Jake remembers how she was furious about there having been no essay started or finished rather than being upset with the fact that Jake had lied so that he didn’t have to spend time with her.

What kind of mother only cares about his good grades? What kind of mother only knows how to communicate to him through talking about the classes she deemed were ‘useful’? What kind of mother asks him to not hang his own artworks in the house, to keep it in his room, out of sight? What kind of mother tells him that what he’s doing with his life, that the art that he’s making and the music that he’s crafting is a waste of time?

He knew why far too young.

He struggled with the fact that she didn’t care about him other than what he could do and if he could do that in the right way. Her way. She wanted him to excel at an elite school, to win awards academically, to play on the school’s footy team as captain, and to attend church consistently. He wasn’t allowed to date anyone but eventually he knew he was meant to court a young church-going woman of similar calibre to himself, to his mother. And Jake knew he was only doing any of that stuff to appease her. Anything that he pursued that he was truly passionate about was not what she wanted. He’s ruined her idea of a career for himself. He’s ruined her idea of Catholic sensibilities. Controlling who he falls in love with is her last call to arms and she’s relentless.

He’s tired of it. Tired of nothing that he does being good enough for her. If only he could prove to her that his music is successful. That he can provide a life for himself out of the art that he produces. Currently… it’s not. She’ll be overjoyed to hear that he’s thinking about quitting Sugapuss. Happy to hear that Ben’s unreliability is causing them to delay recording time and time again. Happy to hear that he can no longer be in the same room as Brian anymore without conflict, without tears, without Jake hurting about how he can’t get any closer to him. If he can’t be what his mother wants him to be, and if he can’t work with others on artworks the he loves, then he’ll have to do it alone. Nothing else works. No one understands him enough, or is understanding enough, to let him be.

But can he be without his mother’s hand ruining the house of his body and wearing down the shell of his mind since he was old enough to deviate from the path that she laid out for him? Does he know how to act outside of acquiescence? Can he rebel? Or will he sit alone in his home, in the quiet, distant from the world, like he had when he had been left behind from a family holiday, as requested. Is silent, self-flagellation all that he knows how to do?

A loud scream pulls Jake out of his reverie. He turns away from the fire toward the source of the scream, the heat that had lathered hot sweats over his face sheds as he turns into the cold air behind him. He can’t see much in the darkness, just glimpses of hands raised in dance, firelight and yellow lights flashing over fingers, quickening their inaudible incantations as the music gets louder. Electronica fills the soundscape, interlaced with drunken laughter and the muffled discussions of the pockets of people who have dispersed from the crowd in the immediate backyard.

He sloshes the warm wine around in the disposable wine glass he’d been holding onto all night. He supposes that if he’s going to get bogged down in a negative thought spiral, he may as well get drunk doing it. He’s about to get up and find where everyone’s getting their fill when he overhears a conversation take place nearby.

“That’s him there.”

“By the fire?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure? I thought Jake had short hair.”

Jake flinches at his name being said aloud. He doesn’t know the husky voices, but this town knows him.

“He grew his hair long since...  Can you… … … please?”

“You should do it with me!”

“No, I’ll… … okay?”

He hears footsteps crunching along the dry paddock and he thinks he’s been left alone once more, except then he hears something being dragged along the ground. Startled, he looks over his shoulder and sees a girl emerge into the firelight, pulling a couple of milk crates toward him.

“Hey, I heard you…” She trails off as she positions one milk crate in front of them and sits on the other beside Jake. “...You were working at your Dad’s shop the other day,” She continues once she’s settled on her seat.

Jake bites his lip. This girl’s deep voice is unfamiliar to him but she seems to familiar with him, either as a friend of a friend, a fan, or a spy of his mother’s. However she knows him, he needs to be careful. Needs to jog himself out of intense thoughts and put on the face of a happy party goer.

“I was helping him out for the afternoon,” He says into the dirt. He clears his throat, wary of the empty seat in front of him and the roaring fire behind it. Wishing to be alone. Wishing that he could be recording right now. But he could fail. And what if he does fail? Won’t his mother be happy. Won’t she be happy that he never leaves Perth and they say, oh they all say that it’s fine, but it’s not fine when his mother is breathing down his neck telling him what he should and shouldn’t be doing and has girls waiting who he doesn’t want to marry. He doesn’t want it. He wants to be her son. He doesn’t want to be the skin and bone born from her. He doesn’t want to be in his body or be who he is or isn’t and what he would give to be Sam or Amber whose parents let them navigate the world on their own.

He closes his eyes. Doesn’t look at her when he asks, “How’d you know I was helping him?”

“My friend saw.”

_She’s watching you._

He opens his eyes to the inferno before him. He asks, hollow, hoping that her answer won’t affirm his question. “My sister?”

She presses her lips thin and shrugs. “We’re not really friends. I don’t think she knows who I am.”

Jake scratches the back of his neck as a way of helping dispel his paranoia. He really has nothing to worry about, he’s just working himself up. “If your friend was the guy who brought in his boat for repair on the weekend, I’m sorry but my Dad already told him that we don’t do refunds for damage done trying to start the engine on a rooftop. If the rudder drove a hole into his ceiling, that’s a builder’s job, not a fibreglass job.”

“Did someone really try to do that?” She laughs, “That’s insane!”

“If you’ve got enough money to buy a fleet of speed boats, you’ve gotta try off road - or off roof - at least once,” He shrugs, then adds, “Sorry but, do I know you?”

“I’m Georgia, Sophie’s friend. You know Soph, from church?”

The cold behind him presses in on his back. He hasn’t been to church in years, much to his mother’s chagrin, but he can kind of remember a Sophie from bible study. She always wanted to read with him even though they were in the wrong age groups. He doesn’t want to believe that his mother would extend her reach through family and friends to anyone young or old just to get to him. Surely he’s working her up to be some kind of demigod, some kind of devil.

_She’s right, it’s hopeless. You’re not good enough. You won’t be able to support yourself. Work with Dad, he needs it. You need it. Just give up already._

“Ugh, how can you sit this close? It’s too hot!” Georgia says before shuffling backwards. She pulls the other crate with her, nudging further away from the bonfire. Then she throws her jumper over the crate and sets down a small cardboard box. “Hey, come over here.”

Jake half turns to see her now, her oval face illuminated in an orange glow. She has shaggy dark hair, almost black and her brown eyes are alight with the reflection of the bonfire. Georgia pulls out a large plastic egg from her handbag and flicks a switch on the base of it. It immediately starts to glow pink, and then slowly changes through a basic colour spectrum. She places it on the makeshift table presumably to provide some extra light aside from the bonfire, but Jake thinks it might be more for aesthetic than to serve a practical purpose. Georgia then slides out a deck of long cards from the cardboard box and starts to shuffle them.

“I’m going to do a tarot reading for you,” She explains.

Jake pushes the point in his shoe into the dirt. He can feel his phone vibrate in his pocket. He slides it out, three letters glow a sickly green. “I don’t know if I…. Uh...” He tucks his phone back in his pocket, and with it silencing his train of thought..

“Come on, it’s just a game,” Georgia says, her voice sounding louder than it really is. “I didn’t bring my book with me so it’s mostly going to be guesses. At least let me practice on you? I’m trying to get better. ”

Jake presses his lips together. His phone stops vibrating. He drinks his warm wine and pulls his crate to sit opposite her.

“Okay, you need to think of a question,” Georgia says, still shuffling.

Nothing comes to mind that he’d like to say out loud.  _Just give in, give in, give in._

“Is there anything…. You want to know? Maybe…. If you’ll find love?”

Jake shifts on his seat, the plastic grid of the milk crate more comfortable than the situation he’s found himself in.

“...Other people ask if they’ll become rich and famous. Maybe Sugapuss will get big enough that you’ll be able to drive a speedboat off your roof,” She laughs, but when Jake says nothing in response, she adds, “The cards can tell you anything.”

“...I have my question. Do I ask it out loud?”

Georgia tuts, tilts her head to one side. “Hope that wasn’t your question…” She smiles. “I’m joking. You can keep it to yourself or say it out loud, whatever works for you.”

Jake tips the last droplets of wine into his mouth. With a forced sense of enthusiasm, he says, “Okay. What does my future behold?”

“Oh, that’s a good one.”

She deals a four card spread. Her whistles loudly increase with each card that she draws.

“Three major arcanas! That’s huge, Jake. Okay, this first card here is the heart of the matter,” Georgia says, pointing at the card placed in the centre with another card crossed over it. “It’s The Devil.”

“The Devil,” Jake repeats, his voice stale.

_Give in, give up, just do what she asks of you._

“Yeah,” She says with her eyebrows raised. “You wouldn’t think this but The Devil is actually a feminine card…  Do you see at the bottom, there are two figures. What does it look like to you?”

“A man and a woman in chains,” Jake says, just as his phone starts to vibrate once more.

“Yeah. So we have The Devil looking down on these two people in chains. Well, they’re not two people. They’re the male and the female counterpart of yourself. So I believe that this card represents temptation. I think it can also be about giving into addiction? Do you feel like you’re addicted to anything right now? Maybe… wine?”

Jake wonders if she can hear his phone vibrating. “Music, I guess. I’m addicted to making music.”

Georgia smiles. “Of course, yeah. So that’s what you’re feeling in the present. From my understanding… the chains represent being trapped in this cycle of -- they’re chained to these longings for physical connection and desire, but they’re not looking after their mental wellbeing. And in doing so, they don’t realise that these chains -- they can actually get out of them at any time. It’s all in their head. Does that make sense?”

His leg starts to feel numb. “Mmhmm…”

“Cool, so the second card, the one on top, this represents the challenges and obstacles that face your present state of mind. This card is actually one of my favourites. If you have a look at it, you can see a woman holding the jaws of a lion open with her hands. It’s about strength, it’s about having the courage to overcome your fears not with a weapon, but with kindness. I think what this card is saying to you is that whatever issues you have currently, you need to be kind to yourself to find your strength.

“The third card here on the left represents your past. What does it look like to you?”

Georgia waits. Jake blinks at the cards. The fire crackles behind them. The weight in his pocket drills into his thigh, drills through the numbness, drills into his bones. He can’t hear the music that plays over the speakers, he can’t hear the music that plays in his mind that isn’t Sugapuss’ but his own, he can only hear the voice of his mother. As if he’s answered her phone call and she’s speaking to him and she’s howling into the husk of his body, her voice whistling betweens the gaps in his ribs.  _You’re addicted. You’re a disappointment. You’re unkempt. You’re going to fail. Don’t cry, come to me. I’ll turn you around. I’ll make you right again._

“It’s okay if you don’t know how to describe it. There’s a lot going on in the card. I guess the main feature is that there are ten coins. The card is telling us that you’ve come from a place of wealth, which is true, hey? Soph told me you’re an Aquinas boy. So this card means that your past was very focused on material wealth and on elitism. Maybe your family is very concerned with a good reputation. It’s a really positive card, which unfortunately is in the past position. It’s not all bad though. Look at your future card, it’s the high priestess, another feminine card. This one’s about, uh, let me remember... I think it’s about knowledge… About finding out who you are - Ah! Sophie…”

A girl comes up behind Georgia and wraps her arms around her neck, resting her chin on Georgia’s head. She casts her eyes away from Jake, her face tinted with pink and it could be from the heat of the fire, or from a long harboured crush.

“Here you are, I’ve been looking for you,” Sophie says. She smiles and her eyes smile too and Jake feels hollow.

He breathes in the night air and it turns and turns inside him, (a coldness that Sophie will soon feel).

“I haven’t finished the reading yet-”

“You should come see Thom play this stupid game,” Sophie interrupts her. She tilts her head to one side, her lighter brown hair hanging over Georgia’s shoulder. A slight amber colour is sprinkled throughout her hair which is highlighted in the glow of the fire.

_It’s a waste of your time. Give in, give up. You know I’m right._

Georgia hastily packs away her things into her bag and then joins hands with Sophie and they move towards the house.

“Come on, Jake, you’ve gotta see this too!” Sophie calls back.

“You’re so brave tonight, Soph,” Georgia says in a broken whisper.

“Shut up,” Sophie laughs, nudging her friend.

The night is full of tracts of darkness that swarm in infestations of invisible serpents that lay poisonous rivers through the landscapes but sparks lay in the wake of the girls and so he follows them. Seeks the brightness because they seem to like him and he wants to be liked, wants to be loved. Wants the devil out of him.

As he gravitates along their trail, he passes people partying in the yard. Some people he’s familiar with, others he knows by their face but not by name, others who look far too young to be here at all. Leaves crunch beneath their feet, cans crush and fizz, laughter sparrows out and singing accompanies acoustic music coming from somewhere else now. A procession of people move toward that and he gets caught in the magnetism until the girls find his arms and pull him away. Guide him to where there are a few scattered people sitting underneath a hills hoist, each of them playing Goon of Fortune.

The girls sit down on the grass either side of a boy who looks absolutely munted. Sophie pats the grass beside her for Jake to sit. Her hand lingers between them, hovering in the cold space. The game continues, and Jake, being less inebriated than the others, is able to dodge the goon sack swinging around the circle of people. He soon realises why the guy had looked so buzzed. He’s so tall that he keeps getting hit in the head by the goon bag and must be far too drunk to maneuver out of the way. Some derro looking guys on the other side of the circle cheer as the bag hits him. He catches hold of the opening of the bag and drinks from it.

The rusty chains that his mother strung through Jake grind on his bones as he watches the guy drink, watches the way he tilts his head back and the way his sandy blond curls fall back on his neck and the way his adam’s apple bobs and the way he smiles with wet lips when he’s done.

The guy lets go of the plastic bag and it bounces on the wire. He then he leans behind Sophie and sticks his hand out towards Jake. “Jaake, nood to finally meet you.”

“Thom did you just say ‘nood’?!” Georgia howls with laughter.

Jake shakes his large hand and he thinks he ought to feel weak but Thom has an energy to him, a warm smile on his pink face that fills Jake with something he used to feel about Brian. A repressed taste for boys he knows he’s not meant to like.

“I was trying to say nice or good and nood came out,” Thom says in defence, lolling back to his spot.

Georgia’s clutching her chest and falling back on the grass and she’s laughing when she asks him, “How many times have you had to drink now, Thomo?? You know you can dodge, right?!”

_Jacob, stop playing these silly games. Get a real job, be a man, give me grandchildren._

Presently the goon bag returns from its cycle and slaps Thom in the face.

“He’s just sitting there taking it,” Sophie wheezes.

_Take it, just take it. Take what life I’ve laid out for you. Don’t you know how to survive in this world?_

Honestly Jake feels bad for Thom because he sees himself in him, sees a reckless spirit who’s eager to please, tempted by cute girls and taunting boys and how could… how could so much be right in that tarot reading? Paranoia seeping in, oiling the chains, the notches sliding over his bones and muscles as they pull tighter around him.

“You’re still playing this game?” Someone says, another brown haired girl who steps in between Georgia and Thom.

She kneels down and pushes a plate with mini sausage rolls and mini pies in front of the five of them, then turns Thom’s face to hers and gives him a kiss that Jake can’t help but watch. She then crawls into Thom’s lap and holds him steady, (and she’ll later call Jake a ruiner when he does the same thing).

She pries the goon bad from Thom’s hands and takes a sip for him, then sends the bag off amongst boos from the other boys.

“It’s not fair, he’s getting too drunk,” She shouts to them. “We should play something else, like truth or dare.”

“I know Sophie wants to play truth or dare!” Georgia cries out.

“No, something else, the guys always pick dare!” Sophie replies.

Georgia leans over Thom with his girlfriend in his lap and her fingertips just reach Sophie’s arm and she says, “Don’t you want to ask someone in particular a question?”

Sophie squeals in response, blushing, and she inches away from Jake. Her face is buried in her hands but he remembers Sophie now. How her eyes always followed him in church, how she always found ways to talk to him but she was younger than him and he didn’t have eyes for anyone in the church or anyone the church would accept. His mother must have seen it. Must have seen the way he rebuffed Sophie and saw the way he was fond of Brian and hated that Brian taught him how to play guitar and detested that they made something as beautiful as music together, as if it was something else. As if it was sin.

And he’s reminded again about how she’s right, that what he’s doing is wrong. That music as a career must be wrong because it’s no longer working and he can no longer work with Brian. It’s Ben being slack but it’s also Brian and it’s that Jake can’t be himself around anyone except the wind swept eucalypts in the bush and even then, he’ll be lost. He’s lost in unknowing himself, his spirit off-centre even when alone. And he’s reminded again about how nothing he has ever done or will ever do will be good enough for himself, as it will not be good enough for her.

“I dare someone to jump off the hills hoist!” One of the boys across from them announces.

“What are you, five?” His friend replies.

“What, Brooke suggested a dumb game, I’m gonna suggest something equally as dumb. No one’s gonna do it, so we’ll just go back to-- wait, woah!”

The pegs box which is secured around the centre post rattles when he jumps up on it. His boots scuff the metal lid, then scrape against the pole as he pulls himself up through the gaps in the wire. The kids underneath the hills hoist either skid backward on the grass or get to their feet, all eyes on him. He manages to pull himself up to sit on the pyramid cap topping the centre pole. Lights from the house barely reach him, but he can see that some of the periphery crowd banking around the musicians turn their attention away from the music to him.

He positions his feet on two of the four rods that protrude perpendicular from the centre and he stands up on them with precarious balance. The hills hoist rotates momentarily, until someone holds onto one side so that he can stand with some stability, arms up to the cloudy sky.

“He did it!” Someone says.

And there’s raucous cries and laughter and whooping and clapping. And he’s seen and unseen, swathed in the darkness. The clouds swell and blister under the low light of suburbia and no stars shine but lightning darts across the sky and rumbles out deep-bellied thunder that makes Jake’s body tremble. And he falls, topples between the gaps in the thick wire and hitches an elbow against something sharp as he tumbles, his soft flesh connecting with the hardness of the ground.

A second of shock. The world strobing in and out. People creeping in with gasps and “Are you okay”’s.

He jumps to his feet, shaky, his elbow smarting. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

And there’s a hand on his back and he looks up to see Thom, this tall boy who he just met (and who’ll become integral to his life in ways he could never have predicted in that moment).

“Why’d you do that, dude?” He asks Jake, his voice slightly slurred. His face is pink and creased with worry. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“I dunno.” Jake shrugs but the confusion isn’t only in his shoulders. It’s in his stomach. It’s in his heart. It’s in his eyes when he looks up into Thom’s and he forgets that there’s anyone else around. Just him and Thom with a storm brewing above them, a storm brewing around them, between them, the girls out in the background (as they won’t always be).

Thom’s hand on his back still, guides him to sit down on the grass again. The girls encroach and a game continues. Jake babies his sore elbow and the oncoming storm above him builds from the humidity, the heat and the moistness, and it’s like he’s gone half deaf. His ears blocked but fine tuned to one person and one person only. Cries and laughter and quizzical questions from people around him fall out of silent mouths except for Thom, whose sounds are so honey sweet and unchain him. Loosen him up. Makes him notice more about him, how attentive he is, how gentle, how funny, how truly lovely he is. And Jake feels it as he did with Brian, that he wants to be friends with Thom, or wants to be him, or wants to be with him, just the two of them on a stormy summer night.

“It’s Jake’s turn now!” Georgia says and he only tunes in at the sound of his name.

“Truth, truth!” Someone’s chanting.

He’s too afraid. Too afraid to not answer truthfully, the law of the game, but too afraid of what his answers might be. “Dare.”

“I told you!” Sophie cries.

“Make him do something worse!” The boy from before says, “Make him-”

“Kiss someone!” Georgia suggests.

Sophie throws her head in her hands, unleashing a muffled squeal. Brooke laughs and clambers out of Thom’s lap so that she can throw her arms around Georgia, nuzzling into her neck.

“Kiss Thom!” Another boy cries.

“Ew dude! Come on, no one would do that!”

“Hey, I like kissing him!” Brooke says, sticking her tongue out.

A breeze picks up, sends a shiver down his back.

“Jake how about you kiss Sophie?” Georgia says.

“No that’s boring!” One of the derro boys says. “He’s gotta do something gross like kissing Thom!”

“Dude, what the hell is wrong with you?”

But Jake does it. Takes it, takes what he can get. He slides over the alcohol-wetted grass and Thom’s lips are already parted when they meet. Thom’s sloppy but warm and Jake keens in because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t know what he wants but for this to go on and never stop. He feels Thom’s hand sliding up his arm and his fingernails scratch against a bruise that’s already forming around Jake’s elbow. When Thom’s hand tightens there, it makes Jake flinch and hiss in pain, a sound which Thom takes into his mouth and almost breaks away from the kiss if Jake hadn’t followed him. Hadn’t pushed to keep their lips joined and hadn’t taken Thom’s hand firmly and pressed it down on his wound. Feels the pain shoot up his arm and he tries not to wince too hard as he kisses, wants to scar this into memory because even though he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he feels good. He feels good and right and the skies clamour above him. There are reactions occuring around him that aren’t all bad and aren’t all good either and all he can smell is Thom and all he can taste is Thom and all he can feel is Thom’s warmth and the sharp injection of pain on his elbow.

“Alright, hands off,” Brooke’s saying, pulling Thom off him.

Thom lets out an exasperated breath and Jake catches his gaze. Glassy and wanting. Jake’s gaze lingers, then drops to Thom’s puffed lips (and Jake didn’t know it at the time, but that wouldn’t be their last kiss). And afterwards, he doesn’t feel like leaving. Doesn’t feel like hiding. He stays at the party longer than he ever thought he would. Rolls around in a stupor of drunkenness that rarely comes with one glass of wine. A kind of high off of life that he hadn’t expected to get out of this night. That didn’t seem possible when he’d locked himself into a negative spiral so early on, before the sun had set.

The storm overhead passes without a single drop of rain. All talk, no action. And the night rattles on, unending, seemingly. He feels okay, too. The anxiety and paranoia that kept him warm tears away into the cooling night. He can breathe and not feel so empty, or not notice it as much now, in the throes of meeting new friends. He does have a sense that they know him already, or have an idea of him; the way he presents, the way he’s talked about. He’s an actor, in that sense, continuing with the mirage they’ve preconceived but there’s something about Thom, over the course of the night, that unhinges the mask. Gently so, through Thom’s easiness, his friendliness, which is not just his drunk persona, but his nature. A type of kindness he could use to hold open the lion’s jaw, if it was his.

It’s a type of kindness that Jake has never felt before. He’s witnessed it, in others, separate from him. But he’s never felt that warmth from his mother or from Brian or from anyone he’s ever tried to love before. His father shows it sometimes, but there’s a barrier to it, a limit bolted shut by his mother and he never realised until now how it feels when someone’s truly kind to you. When someone watches out for you, makes you feel comfortable, makes you feel safe. And even though his phone keeps buzzing and his message bank fills up, he doesn’t want that to feel anything else than what he’s feeling now.

But he still feels slightly out of place. He supposes he should find his sister and make sure she’s alright. So he leaves his new friends, a quiet french exit, and wanders through the mess of teenagers to find his sister. He finds her around the side of the house trying to attach a hose to a tap and she doesn’t much like being approached by him, reassuring him quite forcefully that she’s fine and not too drunk and that she’s going to stay on, that he can go home if he wants to. But he doesn’t want to, he feels. He doesn’t want the night to end, not without the people he’s just met. A notion quite alien to him.

He wanders back through the garden and into the paddock and finds his friends again and they all look so happy to see him, or, Sophie and Thom at least, their eyes wide and sparkling. They sit together on the dry grass watching the last of the bonfire lick the sky. And at some point sleeping bags are handed out from some unknown location, some smart thinking person.

They snuggle together in one big pile, the five of them. Thom, Brooke, Georgia and Sophie, and Jake nestled in with them. He listens to them talk and watches and learns about them and soon they fall asleep. Jake can’t sleep though, his mind simmering with the leftovers of the night before. The sun is waiting to push through the night. Burning beneath the horizon. He looks at Brooke in Thom’s arms and Georgia fitted between Brooke’s legs and Sophie with her head on Georgia’s tummy and her legs knotted in a half unzipped sleeping bag. They’re all connected in one way or another. All close and not close enough, (and too close to some, he’ll discover soon enough).

Time seems endless, and accumulative all at the same time. Eventually, or startlingly too quickly, the dawn breaks. The sun shines bright sobriety into him, reigniting his doubts, and the promising prospects of the night before having gone cold by the morning. Sophie sits up, sidles close to him, a sleepy smile on her face. He wonders if Sophie’s the girl who his mother wants him to meet. It wouldn’t be that bad, he supposes, because of her friends. Because of Thom, this boy he just met and just kissed and just likes well enough to stay at a party for a record amount of time. And if it’s not Sophie who his mother wants him to date, he could date her anyway since she has somehow found something to like about him even though he’s barely talked to her until this night. It might make Sophie happy, might even make his mother happy, get her off his back. Though he’s not sure that’s what he really wants. To give in. But then Sophie tries to hold Jake’s hand while the sun rises through its moods, and he can’t think of a good reason to stop her, so he lets her. Feels her hand tremble in his, and his heart trembles with worry.

He should have known better, that he can’t be trusted.


	4. Sophie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would also die for Sophie! She deserves the world

**(2012-2014)**

 

He doesn’t expect to ever really see Sophie and Thom and everyone again except for around town, but Thom actually comes to Jake’s next Sugapuss gig. Thankfully too, because Ben doesn’t rock up even though Brian had gone the extra mile to pick up Ben’s bass from his Mum’s when Ben couldn’t, and with no one left to play it, Thom steps up. He’s not bad, not bad at all for getting a five minute run down on his chords. More eyes draw to Thom, a tall thing amongst dwarves and Jake quite likes it. Likes that Thom gets the hang of the songs pretty easy, likes that Thom laughs when he makes mistakes, likes that Thom just offered himself up in the first place.

At the end of it he realises Sophie was there too and then he doesn’t really know how it happens but he starts seeing a lot of Thom and Sophie, and Georgia sometimes too, and Brooke a bit. Beach trips and bush walks and trips to the theatre and to the bar across the street that Chris works at. And, his favourite, hours spent driving up and down the coast visiting ghost towns and waterholes and beaches nobody goes to anymore.

Thom fills in for Ben plenty of times, stands by his side on stage or helps him carry his equipment when he does some solo gigs and pretty soon he’s saying goodbye to Sugapuss anyway. Sophie had been encouraging him for months, said that the fact that he’d already recorded two EPs before he could get Sugapuss into a recording studio was enough signification of an end. He knows it himself anyway. Moving onto focus on his solo project is the next logical step, and Sophie’s with him every step of the way.

She’s there for him when he tells his mother. She’s there for him at every Methyl Ethel show whether it’s in a secondhand bookstore or a tiny radio station room. She promotes him on social media. She even makes him a label lovingly titled after a lyric he’d been working on, which unbeknownst to Sophie, is a handful of words about her. He can’t tell her when the words were already there in front of her. Maybe she knows. Maybe she’s able to piece it all together when she hears more of what he’s writing. A full length album. A live set that requires an outfit. Or maybe she only really starts to figure things out when it doesn’t work out with Nathalie, Caitlyn and Amber.

But if she knows, she seems to ignore it. A seed planted in her mind that grows and festers, and Jake grows tired of it. Tired of what she wants, how much she wants of him, and of feeling guilty that he can’t reciprocate. Long walks in the bush and out onto the beach and down the dried up creeks and around his sweltering room over and over. He loves her, he’s sure. Loves her energy, her drive, and how she always knows something to do, something to see. It keeps them both busy, most of the time, but the time away wears them down. The time he asks for. The distance she cries against.

She does so much to save them. Arranges a holiday for them, just the two of them, but he invites Thom and then Georgia wants to come too. They stay at a roadside B&B and Jake has one hand around Sophie’s waist and the other deeper and they kiss in bed and he gets lost in the curves in her mouth. He knows he loves her and the next morning when they all go down to breakfast with Thom and Georgia he knows he loves Sophie but he doubts it, really, because nothing feels right when he knows Thom’s alone.

He’d already guilted over being happy that Brooke couldn’t come on their getaway, and now he has to feel guilty for thinking about Thom while he was with Sophie, though he loves her. He loves her. Though he thinks about Thom more than he should.

It consumes him.

He waits until the end of the holiday to shut himself down. Isolates himself. Guilts over how he can’t love her as much as she loves him because he’s not enough and she’s too much. And she calls and she texts and he needs more time alone. Time to make music, to not make music, to just exist and take in nature and breathe the curated silence and heal from the pain that’s slowly subsiding from what he’s done to the women in his life. And then he takes more time before he releases  _Oh Inhuman Spectacle_ to realise that his relationship with Sophie isn’t working and it isn’t working because of him.

Yet he keeps going with it, somehow. Somehow she accepts him. Weary in her core. She said it was the music, that he was focusing too much on tweaking an album that was already complete, but it’s done and ready to be heard by the world and there’s something else still. There’s Thom, who’s there every time he and Sophie hang out and there’s Thom who plays on stage with him and there’s Thom letting him hug him and hold him and kiss him sometimes, like it’s a joke, like it’s real.

 

**(2015)**

 

He didn’t understand, at the time, why Sophie came to NY that winter. So much was happening at once, he thought she could hardly blame him for being airheaded. But the fact that she came all that way when she knew it was over… He never cared for grand gestures. Felt it was unfair. Felt like he owed her several planet and he knew she deserved that but he didn’t know how to give her everything that she wanted, every part of himself, because he couldn’t part with the parts that were attached to someone else. That were attached to Thom. He couldn’t sever those ties and still she crossed oceans to see him and still she asked him to be someone who could love her the way she knew he couldn’t love her. He knew it would drive her crazy.

He never liked the way he left things but he never asked her to come and she should have known that he could not give more than he had. Because he loved someone else.


	5. Chris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have i just written a 6k chapter for a fandom exactly zero people care about? sure have. am i going to die for these amazing idiots? you betcha. is there one more chapter? soon, my friends. soon.
> 
> ~enjoy

**(2016)**

  
  


“Where is he?” 

“He’ll be here soon,” Chris says confidently. 

Jake scratches the back of his ear, a fingernail uplifts the edge of a scab that ought to heal. He checks his phone again. Nothing. He sits down on the porch next to Chris, squinting at the road cast in early morning sunlight. 

Christmas had been hard for him. It’s always hard, really. He wishes it could be like any other day, one where he could hide himself away somewhere and not talk to anyone he didn’t want to talk to, not answer questions he’ll never be comfortable answering. He’d used fine tuning  _ Everything Is Forgotten _ as an excuse as to why he seemed to have his head in the clouds. It was half true, better than telling his nosy relatives about his personal life. Which is…. Better than it had been, but too private to tell all the same. The only thing that had got him through Christmas was knowing that he’d have a three week holiday to embark on the day after Boxing Day, only it can’t start without Thom. 

Chris lets out a huge yawn that bends his body concave, and he flops his back down on the porch, deflating along the rotting floorboards. Jake sits with his knees bent and his elbows on his knees and his fingers scrape at the sores behind his ears. 

“How about you check the ropes?” Chris suggests, tucking his hands behind his head. 

Jake winces, looking out at Chris’ car glistening in the sun. “Yeah, okay.”

He jumps off the porch and trots down the pathway to the front gate, kicking it shut with his foot as if he has somewhere to be. Well, he does have somewhere to be. They should have been on the road by now, past Mandurah at least, but Thom’s an hour late and Jake’s starting to get worried. Maybe something has happened. Maybe there’s been an emergency, some kind of accident, or maybe Brooke might have returned early from visiting her friends in Melbourne and has stolen Thom away again… 

The heat plastered onto the panels of the car stings his knuckles while he’s double checking that the surfboards are tied down securely. None of them give so he claps his hands together, pivots and is about to trot back to his spot on the porch when he hears a car come down the road. He snaps around to look, a hopeful smile on his face, but the car whizzes straight by leaving Jake feeling stupid for thinking it was Thom. 

He returns to the porch, elbows on his knees and head hanging down. The thing is… he and Chris had worked so hard to make this getaway happen. Chris had turned down plenty of shift offers at The Bird, Jake had gone through the painful process of organising their stay at the family’s beach house such that their stay wouldn’t interfere with his mother’s schedule, and Thom… Thom hadn’t had to do much of anything, or so it seemed. Jake knew that Brooke had helped Sophie move to Sydney over the last few months. Thom had nothing to do with that. Part of Jake wonders if Brooke had asked Thom to go with her to Melbourne, if Thom had had to make a choice or if everything just gets handed to him, if it  really is so easy for him. Happy family, happy relationship, happy life.

Jake supposes that the heat of the day’s making him more jealous than normal. 

There’s a sound like bicycle wheels skidding on asphalt and then the sound of bushes taking on the weight of something heavy. 

“Hey, you’re going to crush my hedge!” Chris calls out, leaping off the porch toward the gate. 

Jake looks up and sees Thom taking a moment to wipe his brow. 

“It’s rubbish anyway,” Thom says, picking up a bicycle too small for him and tossing it over the hedge and dumping it inside the front yard of Jake and Chris’ rented house. 

The hard edges of the bicycle dig into the loamy soil. Chris shakes his head, goes to right the bicycle and wheel it around the side of the house. Jake stands up. 

“I’m sorry I’m late man,” Thom says as Jake moves toward him, “Bec said she was going to drive me but then she took the car out and I packed my phone away for the whole going offline thing so I just found an old bike in the shed and - oh.”

Jake throws his arms around Thom and snuggles his forehead against Thom’s heart. There’s a dreaded pause, but then Thom’s arms wrap high around Jake’s shoulders.

“Bad Christmas?” Thom asks softly, his thumb barely grazing the sores behind Jake’s ears. 

“Terrible,” Jake mumbles. 

Jake feels the throb of Thom’s heartbeat through his thin t-shirt, still catching his breath from his long bike ride over. His arms are rigid too, they won’t lower to Jake’s waist and Thom won’t comb his fingers through Jake’s hair as he has a habit of doing. Or did. He realises that they’re still quite public here in Perth, that it may take some time for Thom to feel like he’s invisible again. Jake might feel the same way if he hadn’t become so addicted to what he had with Thom, and experienced something akin to withdrawal switching gears from being able to be with Thom more intimately over the last year or so to having to position himself separate from Thom and Brooke any time they come off tour. It’s always too sudden, too severe, and the longer this thing they have going keeps going… the harder Jake finds it to hold himself back when they can see each other again, like Thom does. 

Jake just can’t get enough of him. Finds himself wanting Thom the instant he might get to have him. And he wishes, in this moment, that Thom would just be as selfish as he is and relax his arms, comb his fingers into Jake’s hair and hold him close and not pull back when Chris comes back around from putting the bicycle away. 

“Chop, chop,” Thom says, holding Jake by his shoulders at arm’s length. “Time’s a wastin’!”

Thom’s hands slide off Jake and he jumps over to the car, yanks the back door open and dives into the back seat. The next second, Thom’s leaning into the front of the car and honking the horn, hassling Jake and Chris to hurry up as if they were the ones who were over an hour late. 

 

 

Jake feels as if they can’t leave Perth sooner, or his Perth, at least. Thom talks about his Christmas and it seems so arbitrary, so idyllic and contrary to Jake’s experiences of family that he finds himself niggling away at the hidden messages lodged within the stories Thom tells, as if there’s more to the way in which they reunited, to the rigid closeness Thom afforded him for only moments in time. There might be something, but there’s also the paranoia that Jake gets when he’s home and not wholly anonymous, an inhibiting cloak that he’s more than happy to shrug off en route to Injidup. 

The drive is long, longer because they beach hop along the way. Night has fallen by the time Jake pulls onto the dirt road that weaves through a thick forest, cubic mansions hidden away beneath the canopies. Jake deactivates the alarm before letting his friends inside, the lights coming on in rows one by one, as if lighting a theatre. 

“Holy shit Jake,” Thom says, walking around the open plan loungeroom with his hands against his cheeks. “I know you said you have bad memories here but this place is amazing!”

“It’s huge,” Chris agrees.

“It’s state of the art!”

Jake feels sick in his stomach. “I’ll show you to your rooms.”

He leaves the master alone, though the bed size would be best for Thom. Instead, he puts Thom in his sister’s room, Chris in his and he takes the guest room, though you could hardly tell the difference between guest and child’s room. There’s never been much character to them save for the memories that sweat from the walls. 

He sleeps restless that night, knowing Thom’s nearby, but not close enough. 

 

 

On the first day in Injidup he takes the guys to the natural spa. They spend nearly the whole day there soaking and talking and trying to wind down. On the second he takes them southeast through the forests to a winery his parents don’t go to, and Jake finds the time to read a book in the afternoon. Agitated, though, while he reads, because it’s still taking some time for Thom to get back into the groove of it, the groove of them. Makes Jake glad he decided to book the Injidup house for three weeks, and not two. This period of calmness is limited and cannot be extended. Chris has work and New Nausea and personal projects to pick up before their 2017 album release and tour dates begin. Thom has his own commitments and Jake has, well, he’ll need to be alone. Besides, his mother will need the holiday house for her aerobics lessons. It had taken far too much negotiating with her to make this happen at all, just so that he can enjoy some time away from people who hike up his anxiety. And be with Thom, hopefully, if he plays his cards right. 

On the third day, the day he had planned on taking Thom and Chris to his favourite beach, he wakes up with an awful headache. He digs around in his suitcase before accepting the fact that he hadn’t brought any paracetamol with him, and worse, that the nearest supermarket won’t be open until the 2nd of January. He toughs it out as he walks the guys down the long pathway to the beach. They play a few games of cricket on the sand but every time the ball smacks the cricket bat with a loud crack, he feels like his head is splitting open. 

He abandons his post and lopes into the throes of the ocean. He dives under the waves then finds a spot to float in, soon joined by Thom and departed by Chris, who begins swimming laps further down the bay. Jake absorbs the coolness on his backside and takes in the warmth of the sun on his face, his head throbbing between the two extremes. His eyes droop shut, red spots in the dark, and he’s aware that Thom is closeby but not sure exactly what he’s doing for some time. 

Then, out of nowhere, Thom says wistfully, “France was so great.”

Jake tilts his head out of the water to hear better. “Pardon?”

“I was just thinking about how great Paris was.” Thom combs his fingers through his wet hair and pushes his fringe to one side. 

“Yeah, it was pretty great,” Jake says. He watches the way Thom’s cheeks look pink and how the water droplets over his face glisten under the midday sun. “I knew you’d love it.”

“What we should do,” Thom begins, rolling over onto his stomach in the water, “Is just fuck off to Paris and become street artists.”

Jake’s heart swells. He tilts his head back to face his blush to the sky. “You could be my muse!”

“Aren’t I already?” Thom turns on his side and lifts his leg up out of the water, his foot pointed like a ballet dancer, though perhaps he learned it from Brooke. He holds his position with a smug look on his face which gets wiped clean when a large wave washed over him. 

“Yeah… You are,” Jake says when Thom’s head is still underwater. 

Thom submerges then whips his head around, water spinning out with the tail of his hair and he gasps for breath. He laughs, and Jake closes his eyes again to float in the sea, only to be delightfully pulled back into conversation when Thom continues talking. 

“Picture it, Jake. We could set up easels over bridges and just paint whatever, make a bit of dough, live in a tiny little apartment, by ourselves, if we can. I don’t mind sharing with Frenchies but you know we’ll need a big bed. And we can get fat on cheese and wine.”

Jake stares at the great blue sky above him, joyful but with dread pooling in his stomach for when THom’s going to detail Brooke’s place in all this. He hadn’t talked about her since they left Perth so he knows that it’s coming. Still, Jake can’t resist playing into a dream when Thom dares to spin one. 

“We could listen to the busking musicians for inspiration while we paint, and go to art galleries and write opinion pieces about what inspires us… I could translate, that would earn us a bit more of a living wage.”

“Come on, that’s not fun.”

“Maybe I could get into sculpting again.” Jake shrugs, then pivots in the water and toes Thom in the shoulder. 

“We could do performance art,” Thom suggests. He takes hold of Jake’s pruned foot with both hands. “I mean, I’m not great at acting but you’re good at directing so you can just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“Yeah?” Jake digs his hands into the water and pulls himself toward Thom. His foot slides out of Thom’s clutch so that he can tread water. 

“Yeah.”

Thom catches his gaze, and breaks away only because a wave lifts around them. The movement upsets Jake’s balance too, causing him to have to cling onto Thom’s shoulders or else be knocked into him. Thom catches him, his hands on Jake’s hips. The waves settle. The two hold each other’s gaze. 

Jake hesitates. The lines that delineate what he can and can’t do have been so blurred over the last tour. Things were a lot easier when he and Sophie had finally ended. It had gone on too long. He knows that now. He just didn’t think she would actually want to draw things out… He remembers the difference between Thom in Perth and Thom away from Perth. And Thom with Brooke and Thom away from Brooke. He certainly saw the difference in Thom’s behaviour when Sophie and her friends came to visit that New York winter, when everything was chaotic and Sophie wanted Jake and was watching Thom and the closeness Jake had been able to construct between himself and Thom seemed to strain but not entirely cease during that time. Maybe Sophie could see it long before Jake even knew himself, but that winter, the coldest he’s ever felt, was when he began to realise he couldn’t do without Thom. 

After New York, he, Thom and Chris were on the road for months and months. They were together all the time. And the way Thom had let him hug him, kiss him, touch him elsewhere… he wasn’t sure if those intimacies were real or if they were just play. He thinks that they were real, hopes so, because they had felt real. But only real as they were living it. He looks back on their time since Methyl Ethel miraculously achieving success and it’s so cloudy, so intangible like a dream that’s not his.

Somehow in all of this haze, Jake realises that his head has stopped pounding and that his heart has started to in place, and his vision wrinkles like the heat blur on horizon as he realises that Thom’s still holding him. Hands on his hips, lifting him a little with ease in the buoyancy of the water, so that Jake is a little taller. And before he can stop himself, Jake asks Thom to kiss him. 

Thom raps his fingers against Jake’s hiphones, a smirk on his face. “You always want me to kiss you.”

“Well… yeah…”

And so he does. He hooks down and kisses Thom and Thom lets him, as he does. Opens his mouth and lets Jake slide his tongue against Thom’s and Jake tastes the remnants of a wave warmed in Thom’s mouth. But then Thom pulls away. Hands off. And he laughs. 

Jake’s heart beats in his throat. His ears feel like they’re blocked. 

Chris then emerges somewhere nearby and Thom flips away in the water, looking frisky with a silly grin on his face. But the laugh tells Jake everything that Thom had said, all the dreams they dreamed of together about eloping to Paris and living as street artists, as lovers, were just happiness locked away in dreams. Because Thom… he’s with Brooke. 

 

 

The hot sand beneath their feet finally gives way to the relief of grass as Jake, Thom and Chris walk from the beach back to the holiday house. They walk in weary silence, save for the cricket bat and balls knocking together inside a drawstring bag that Chris has slung over his shoulder. Kookaburras swing on the high branches of the gum trees that encroach the fringe of the beach, and they jump from branch to branch, laughing at the three sweating people hiking up the grassy slope after a long day out in the sun. 

When the three of them breach the crest of the slope and the holiday house can be spotted peepign out of the thicket of trees, Thom throws one arm out barring Jake and Chris from moving forward. 

“Whoever gets to the house first gets to shower first!” He proposes, having started to run before he had even finished his sentence. 

Without a second thought, Chris throws down the bag of cricket equipment and chases after Thom. Jake is a little slow to start because he’s going to point out that there’s actually four showers in the house but Thom has already bolted half of the distance so Jake sprints after them anyway. With his head start, Thom reaches the house first and with two hands, slings open the sliding door which sets off the house alarm. Chris leaps into the house after Thom and Jake catches a blur of him sliding into the kitchen before Jake’s skidding across the tiles himself, his hot, sandy feet burning along the cool floor. He makes a sharp turn toward the wall and slams his palm over the plastic lid that covers the alarm and yanks it down, his fingers trembling as he punches in the code to disable the alarm. The siren turns off and the house becomes muted by the rolling ocean sounds washing in from the open doorway. Jake turns and leans against the wall to catch his breath. 

Thom hangs from the door frame, one leg into the bathroom. He grimaces in apology. “Sorry, girl’s gotta wash.”

Thom then steps backward and shuts the bathroom door. The shower starts shortly after. 

Chris clinks an empty glass on the kitchen counter and wipes the water off his lips. “Guess I’ll take the upstairs one.”

Jake nods and tries not to pant. He listens to Chris saunter upstairs and as he catches his breath, he listens to the showers running behind closed doors. Once he’s breathing normally and his ears have stopped ringing, he goes back outside to get the cricket bag. When he picks up the bag, the balls clink together and he feels a faint pang in his head calling back his earlier headache. 

“This is what I get for overthinking things,” Jake says out loud, though no one is around to hear him save for the kookaburras still cackling in the treetops. 

He drops the equipment in the side shed then washes off his sandy feet at a tap without much focus. Sand granules remain amongst the hairs around his ankles, but he leaves it be and steps into the house. He pulls the sliding door shut along its track and by the time he turns around, he sees that Thom has gotten out of the shower and has changed into little shorts and a delightful crop top. He’s thrown himself down on the long couch in the living area, which looks normal sized with Thom stretched out on it. The staircase creaks as Chris steps down it, dressed in skinny jeans and a fitted black top. 

Jake’s aware that he’s still in his boardies and that the upper half of his body is most definitely still covered in sand, but he very much wants to join Thom on the couch so decides he’ll wash off later. The thought thrills him, considering that his mother used to get so anal about keeping the holiday house pristine. Without her here, he can do what he likes so long as he cleans up before they leave in a few weeks. Only he hopes that the alarm wasn’t triggered long enough to send his parents a warning message. He has to remind himself of how unlikely that is, considering he’d been pretty fast at disabling it. 

“Should we watch a film?” Chris suggests, wandering over to scan the titles on the DVD rack beside the large flat screen TV. 

“Yeah, I could go for not moving for a while,” Thom says, lifting his arms over his head on the armrest and dangling his hands off the side.

“What should we watch?” Jake asks as he goes over to the coffee table and picks up the remote for the SmartHouse controls. He presses a button and the ceiling to floor curtains automatically glide along the tiles, sealing off the 2pm sun that would otherwise blast into the living area. 

“I don’t really feel like something avant-garde,” Thom says, “I’m just putting it out there, Jake. I don’t think I can read subtitles right now.”

Chris lets out a laugh as he squats to look through the selection on the lower shelves. “I dunno, I could probably go for something freaky.”

Thom pouts, crossing his arms. “Oh so it’s two against one is it? I see how it is.”

“There’s not much of a selection here,” Jake says. He sits on top of Thom’s legs, making his friend grunt under the weight and shuffle around so that Jake is sitting under Thom’s legs rather than on top. 

“So many aerobics DVDs,” Chris ruminates, still running a finger along the spines. 

“All mum’s.” 

Chris grunts in response. He pulls out a DVD and reads the back. “Want to see a nature doco?”

Jake places his hands on Thom’s thighs, caressing his fine leg hairs and smiling at the way Thom’s skin goes taut at the touch. “Nah, they’re not good. They’re just a bunch of promotional videos that one of Dad’s clients send in all the time.”

“That could be fun,” Chris says, though he slides the case back into its spot.

“They’re more like movie length ads. Keep looking, I know there’s some-”

“-Here’s one. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou!”

Thom claps his hands together. “Yes! Love that movie.”

“Good beach movie too,” Chris says, popping the DVD out of the case. 

Chris attempts to set up the movie, taking cues from a couched Jake when he needs help. Then Jake watches Chris remove some cushions off an arm chair and pull them down in front of the couch he’s sitting on with Thom. Chris proceeds to make a bed out of the cushions and then lies down on them, propping his head up with his hand and elbow to a cushion. He bends one knee and leans it against Jake’s legs, leaving the three of them all connected in one way or another. 

“Can you see past the coffee table?”

“Yeah,” Chris says. 

“I think he’s lying,” Thom says, sending a look to Jake. 

Jake’s stomach flutters at the sight of the smile on Thom’s face.

“It’s glass,” Chris laughs, “I can see through it.”

“Alright,” Thom says though he doesn’t sound convinced. 

Thom drops his left foot off Jake’s lap and knocks Chris’ knee over. Chris puts up with the playful aggression and goes back to how he was lying once Thom has returned his leg to lounge over Jake. The production notes finish and the film begins with a man introducing Steve Zissou in Italian. 

Thom groans. “Ughh I forgot there were foreign language parts!”

“Too late now, Thommy, we’re watching this,” Jake replies, leaning to his side to pat Thom on his belly. 

“It’s only at the start, buddy,” Chris consoles him.

Jake leaves his hand on Thom’s stomach, his palm half on the part of Thom’s skin which is revealed by the hem of his crop top and his little shorts. Jake watches Thom turn his head to watch the film, though notes the way Thom’s lips curl up when Jake starts to caress the skin with his middle and ring finger.

This is just how it is. Jake makes the first move and Thom goes along with it. Teases Thom, sees how far he can go with certain touches, remembers the ones that are allowed and tests the waters on where else he could go, where those touches could lead, if anywhere. A long embrace or a rare invitation to sleep by his side.

He’s aware that he needs to be careful. Needs to not ask too much, not do too much, not want Thom too much, all cues he’d taken from Sophie as if he’d ever had to limit himself for her… He thinks he’ll never know the desire she had for him in any comparable sense in his life, but he has a desire for Thom. One that he has, truthfully, not fully comprehended yet but that’s so special and so precarious that he’ll let himself be squashed by Thom if it means he can be close to him. Besides, Thom sometimes surprises him by how much they’re allowed to do. 

“It’s hot,” Thom says, without moving his eyes from the TV. 

“It’s nice and cool on the floor, and ample room if you want to join me,” Chris comments. 

Jake scratches the back of his ear. “I’ll put the air con on.”

He shuffles back to his side of the couch and leans over Thom’s legs and Chris’ knee and is able to reach the remote with the tips of his fingers. He sits back and toggles the air conditioner settings to something not violently cold as his mother tends to like it, and turns the volume of the film up to compensate for the loud fan noise that the air conditioner outputs. He then tosses the remote in the general direction of the coffee table. He misses and the remote clatters across the tiles. 

Thom’s eyes follow the sound, then dart back to where Jake has rested his hands over Thom’s thighs. Thom clears his throat then repositions himself on the couch, hunching down so that his ass is basically in Jake’s lap and he’s very much squashing Jake now, but he doesn’t care. The move has given Jake closer access to Thom’s abdomen, though he doesn’t go for it straight away. Instead, he traces his fingers up the inner side of Thom’s thighs, pausing when Thom throws his left leg out again to kick Chris’ knee over once more. Chris doesn’t fight back, lets Thom push him over with a little pained grunt and the passivity borne out of years of dealing with several mischievous brothers. 

Thom leaves his leg dangling off the couch, opening a gap between his thighs and his shorts ride up a little and Jake curls his touch underneath the pale skin between the right leg hole of Thom’s shorts. Thom drops his chin to his chest, catches his bottom lip between his teeth, and when his eyes dart to meet Jake’s, his eyelashes flutter and he turns away again, pretending to be very engrossed in the film. 

Jake keeps toying with Thom’s ticklish skin, thrilled that Thom’s letting him touch him in this way and nervous all the same, heat building inside him with trepidation. He edges incrementally higher so that his left pinkie finger, his ring finger, soon his middle finger too are all hidden under the beige fabric of Thom’s shorts. Thom’s attention towards the film fails several times, his eyes darting to Jake’s hand every so often, a kind of gurgled stir in Thom’s throat. 

When Thom folds his arms tight to his chest, Jake has a hint of his previous headache resurging, worried that he might have hit Thom’s limit for the day, but Thom doesn’t inch away. Inches somehow closer to Jake, taps his bare foot on the floor in a distracted manner. The volume of the film fills the room, overpowers the cool air pulsing down from above. Jake’s head throbs from the heat that he makes, his mind buzzing with a weave of a dream that might come true. He’s never seen Thom like this before. Must be the equation of not being on tour anymore, not being near Brooke or in Perth with other people they know, and even with the addition of Chris being  _ right there _ , Thom’s the most relaxed he’s probably ever been with Jake touching him in a sensitive spot. 

Incrementally, the tips of his fingers reach the hem of Thom’s undies and Thom doesn’t recoil. He pauses. Licks his lips. Wonders exactly what he’s going to do from here because what he could do is something he’s thought about, a place he’s wanted to explore. And Thom isn’t pulling away yet, he isn’t laughing either. He’s igniting hope in Jake that they could exist as they were travelling together, but here, or even home in Perth. That they could be together and love each other and--

“Oh my  _ God _ !”

The sound of a familiar voice skewers a blade through his heart. 

Jake snaps his hand away from Thom and looks up to see his mother standing in the centre of the living room, her mouth agape in shock. He doesn’t know what angers him more, the fact that Thom scrambles out of their entanglement like he’s had molten lava thrown on him or that his mother has purposely tiptoed into the centre of the room to make her disgusted announcement only more dramatic. His mother so adores letting everyone know that she has entered a room by stamping her expensive high heels over the floor, so the fact that she had hushed herself and her client who cowers behind her so as to infringe upon Jake’s privacy… Okay, he’s definitely more angry about his mother. 

“Jacob, what on Earth were you just doing to Thomas?!” She looks between them, waiting for an answer.

Chris stands up and pauses the film. Jake balls his fists and refuses to look at Thom. 

His mother folds her arms across her chest. “Where’s your beautiful girlfriend, Thomas, is she around?”

No one says anything. Jake chances a look at Thom and sees how Thom’s clinging to his crop top, his knuckles going white. Jake curls his lips and pushes his fists into the cushions of the couch. The cold air presses down on them all. 

“She’s in Melbourne,” Chris says, somehow sounding chill despite the staleness of the room. 

“I see.” Jake’s mother pauses, then takes a few steps toward the group. “Jacob darling, why are you here? I thought you were coming in January.” She says airily as if she hadn’t planned the entire encounter. “Darling, didn’t we talk about this several times?”

“Yes,” Jake says through grit teeth. “We talked about this so that I could come here when you’re not. That’s what we arranged.”

“Well,” she tutts, “You must have gotten the dates wrong because I wouldn’t have let Susan book with me if you were going to be here.”

“I can uh- I can come back anoth-”

“Susan, I do not accept cancellations!” She grabs her client’s aerobics bag from her and then turns to Jake, delivering her following words as if it’s just mother and son in the room. “One of us is going to have to leave.”

Jake meets his mother’s stare and seethes. 

“We could go out,” Chris offers, breaking the silence. He looks between Thom and Jake, then back to Jake’s mother. “How much time do you need?”

His mother’s expression does not soften when she turns to address Chris, though she attempts to candy her voice. “That’s very kind of you however I need to use the television…” Her eyes rake over Thom and Jake. “And I’m afraid that the area may have become diseased…”   
  


 

Chris makes Jake swap over for driving because he keeps zoning out and accidentally speeding up and it’s probably for the best because Jake feels like sobbing. He bends into himself in the passenger seat, unwilling to look at any reflective surface in case he catches sight of Thom. He knows Thom’s in the backseat, a cold shadow closeby. 

The sun is only just setting when Chris pulls up at Thom’s house. Thom jumps out and drags his things out of the back and hangs over the open car door when he asks, “You don’t think she’s going to tell anyone, do you?”

 

**(2017)**

 

Jake comes home from a long walk in the blistering heat, showers cool water over his sunburnt skin and then clambers into bed. It’s too hot, but he has the fan on high and he doesn’t want to leave the cocoon he has made with his doona so he just stays put. He hasn’t spoken to Thom in weeks. Keeps thinking about what happened and how all he heard was how worried Thom was about Brooke finding out and how it had made him feel unwanted even though he purposely put himself in this weird background position of their relationship because it’s all the other two would accept. But he hates it. Hates that he feels like this entire thing is his fault, that it proves that he’s untrustworthy with maintaining the boundaries Brooke set out for them and angry that Thom let him pass those lines. A little bit thankful, but mostly angry. 

He’s not meant to think on this after walking. It’s meant to clear his mind, and it does but only while he’s doing it. When he gets home and stops moving and becomes still in darkness, the thoughts resurface faster than his sunburns can blister. 

There’s a knock on his bedroom door that frightens him. Makes his skin crawl when he contemplates having to speak. But no words are spoken, rather, there’s a dip in his bed and he feels his cocoon slowly being peeled away. 

He smells an aroma first. Chicken and peas. He sits up a bit and sees Chris carrying a tray of steaming soup. His heart beats fast and he fights back tears and he’s not sure that it’s that he’s hungry for food but that he’s hungry for kindness. 

“You didn’t eat before you went out.” 

Jake purses his lips and looks into the corner of his room. “I could have gotten something while I was out.”

“Did you?” Chris watches Jake avoid eye contact. “Sit up.”

Jake peers down at the soup. Bits of chicken and green peas and carrots float around in yellow liquid. “I can’t eat.”

Chris stands up. “I’ll leave it here for when you can.” He balances the tray in one hand while he removes some things from Jake’s bedside table and then pushes the tray on the surface. 

He makes to leave but Jake sits up and extends an arm out of his cocoon and takes hold of Chris’ arm. Chris looks down at him, startled. 

“Can you… can you stay.”

“Sure.”

The stiffness in Chris’ arm softens and as he turns back to sit down on the bed next to Jake, Jake asks him to hug him. Chris doesn’t say anything. It’s so dark, Jake can barely see his face either, but there’s no more than a second’s pause before Chris is leaning to one side and wrapping his arms around Jake. It’s almost nothing to anyone else but it’s supremely tender to Jake and the tears come out of nowhere. Spill out of him and he tries to keep himself together, tries to stop crying and apologises profusely, yet he won’t let go of Chris. 

“It’s fine,” Chris says, rubbing Jake’s blanketed back. “It’s fine.”

Jake’s forehead falls to Chris’ shoulder, hugs him the way he would hug Thom but with more tears, probably. After a few minutes of this, of crying and having his back rubbed and smelling the scent of the chicken soup, he starts to feel ridiculous. Like he shouldn’t be showing Chris this side of himself, this needy baby side of his persona. He sucks in saliva that has pooled in the front of his mouth and lifts his head from Chris’ shoulder and looks at him. 

Looks at his friend, who is being truly a good friend to him, and kisses him. Why he does that, he’s not sure exactly, but Chris lets him. Careful about it too. Reciprocates by opening his mouth but does so quite stiffly. 

After, he says to Jake, “This isn’t what you want.” 

He’s right. Jake only feels worse. He falls back on the bed, blankets billowing out under the movement and he grits his teeth. 

Chris doesn’t leave. 

“Have you looked at your phone lately?”

“...Yeah,” Jake says, still wondering what went through his mind to kiss Chris in that moment. 

“Are you going to go to the… did you get the invitation?”

Jake sits up. “What invitation?” His throat goes dry. His mind flicks to what that could mean, an invitation. To a party, to a gig, to Thom’s wedding?

“Wait- you don’t… Hang on a sec.” He pulls out his phone and starts tapping furiously. “Oh shit… I shouldn’t have said anything.” He gets up. “Thom’s gonna come over in the arvo, do you mind? It might be the la…”

“The what?” Jake’s face loses all colour. “The last  _ time _ ?”

Chris scratches his head. He doesn’t say anything more, just leaves Jake alone in the room. 

The steam from his chicken soup rises into the dark ceiling. It distracts him for all of 2.4 seconds before Jake picks up his phone and logs into Instagram for the first time in months. He views Thom’s first, but the goldmine is in his girlfriend’s. How long had Thom known? How long had anyone else known this secret that they kept from him? That Brooke hadn’t just been visiting friends on the other side of the country. She’d been doing house inspections. She’d been packing. She’d been arranging a farewell party. She’d been sitting on this information acting like Jake knew that she and Thom were to be moving to Melbourne together. 

When was Thom going to tell him?


	6. no one but dreams and prayers of you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((sorry i couldn't figure out how to continue with this fic without breaking the established format and switching to a Thom perspective. Pls enjoy Thom's pov for this and the next chapter~~))

**(January 2017)**

 

“I brought strawberries!” Thom announces.

Chris has opened the front door and he looks happy to see Thom, elated even. It only makes him feel more guilty. He kept this secret a secret too long, from everyone. He told himself that it’s because he’s not technically going to be living in Melbourne until the international tour is done in the middle of the year. Except he’ll still be moving his stuff before then. And he’s still had knowledge of the fact long before Brooke made the farewell party announcement on Facebook. That just made it official before he officially knew how to explain it to his very close friends, all of whom he’d miss more than his own family. It’s some kind of cop out that he’s got away with not having to say it out loud, and yet the first person he’s going to have to say it to is going to be the hardest. 

Chris throws his arms around him briefly, as if pressing in all of that fear and self-doubt back into Thom’s body, and upon release, he shows Thom inside the house. Thom follows Chris into the kitchen, then stops. Chris puts his hands on his hips and gives the stack of strawberries in Thom’s hands a querying look.

“Woolies had five punnets for five bucks so had to nab that deal,” Thom explains.

“They must’ve made a loss on that,” Chris says. He opens the fridge and rearranges things so that he can take the punnets from Thom one by one and fit them in on a shelf. He takes the fourth punnet from Thom and says, “Jake actually had a shower when I told him you were coming.”

“Aw he scrubs up for me, ain’t that sweet,” Thom jokes but it comes out strained. “Leave the last one, I’ll bring it in.”

“You’re going in now?” Chris asks him as if he’s about to go to war. He closes the fridge and stands up. Pauses for a moment, then says, “I’ll head out to the shops. Think I might be right for strawberries though.”

Chris winks, then collects his wallet from the counter, waves a sheepish goodbye over his shoulder and heads out. Thom is left alone in the kitchen with the deafening silence looming around him. It’s been a while since he’s been in this house, and a while yet before he will again. Maybe... never... will again if Jake takes this the wrong way. Logically, Thom knows he won’t. Jake will just be upset, which is a major part of why he didn’t want to say anything. In fact, he’d kind of hoped Jake would find out on his own, then he wouldn’t have to say it. Saying it to Jake’s face would make it real, even though it  _ is _ real. And worse, it would mean talking about what he’s losing… something he didn’t want to end though nothing had really even started. Had it? There wasn’t anything to explain, he’d had to say to Brooke. That it was nothing, there is nothing, it is nothing. Nothing but friendship and craftsmanship and nothing romantic except for their mutual love of music. Definitely, for sure, without a doubt.

But how many times had he had to explain that to her? It was so easy, or it became that way. But saying it to Jake? Telling Jake that how he touches him makes her jealous, makes her ask what he does when he and Jake are the only ones in the room, makes himself have to hide what he really feels, what he feels when he’s with Jake… And what if Jake agrees that it’s nothing? That would appease Brooke, but if it’s not nothing, it’s something. What if Jake admits his feelings for Thom? Will everything change? He won’t have to move to Melbourne with Brooke. He won’t have to quit Methyl. He won’t quit Methyl anyway but he doesn’t want to lose Brooke, which complicates everything. He loves her. He loves Jake too… It’s why he’s here in the first place, telling Jake what he ought to know, from his own mouth. 

He heads towards Jake’s room. There’s not a sound coming from behind the closed door which is unusual, really, for there to not even be any music playing. When he nudges the door open, he finds Jake sitting on the edge of his bed. He has made it up with clean sheets that still have their fold in them. Jake himself is recently showered and has changed into a crisp pair of pants and t-shirt, as if that would be enough to cover up how wrecked Jake and the periphery of his bedroom looks. 

“Hey,” Thom says, closing the door behind him. 

Jake doesn’t sound surprised, doesn’t sound happy to see him either. “Hi.”

So this is how he’s going to start it. “How, uh, have you been?”

Jake doesn’t answer, so Thom sits down on the bed beside him. He opens the plastic lid of the punnet and offers the strawberries to Jake. Jake looks at the red lumps in the box for a moment, then picks one out by the leaves, holds it upside down and stares at it as if it’s the most alien thing between them.

To anyone else, seeing Jake silent like this, around January, would be utterly normal. Jake does this sort of thing. He pays his dues at family gatherings, then he goes away. Locks himself up from the outside world. It’s actually really normal for Thom to not see a whole lot of Jake in the summer. Except it wasn’t meant to be that way, not this time. He and Chris were both meant to be with him, at the holiday house. But then there was all of that unfairness with how they were interrupted and had to abandon their plans and how he hadn’t had the chance to tell Jake about moving like he wanted to.

He fidgets with the edges of the punnet box, running the pads of his fingers over the squeaky plastic. 

“There’s no easy way to tell you this-”

Jake’s words come out like they’re so much effort. Like he has to use as much breath to whisper them as he would to shout them. “You’re moving to Melbourne.” 

Thom stares at the punnet of strawberries, glaringly aware of how large his hands are in comparison. A mixture of dread and relief rattles down his spine. “You know?”

Thom doesn’t tear his eyes away from the strawberries. His peripheral vision tells him that Jake is looking away too. He knew the Facebook event was risky. Jake hardly ever goes on but what if he did? And it’s only now that Thom considers that if Jake found out from that, if he saw the event notification last night and he thought that the comeuppance of how they had to abruptly abandon their holiday meant that he has to move across the country, away from him. 

“I had some time to process it,” Jake says.

Thom is at a loss for words. He doesn’t know what Jake means. 

“Chris… told me…” Jake says, his voice sounding so distant and strained. “You could have told me…”

“I was…” Thom’s eyes move from the strawberries to Jake’s knees. “I told Chris same as everyone else - when the event went up last night.”

“Oh.”

He looks back at the strawberries. “Yeah.”

Jake pauses. “But you would’ve told me earlier.”

“I want you to know that I still want to play in Methyl. I know that contractually I have to,” Thom starts. He looks at Jake’s knees again, looks at the strawberry in Jake’s fingers. “But I want to, as well.”

“You want to move?” 

“I want to keep playing with you.”

Thom’s trying to be as clear as he can but it’s like they’re talking about two different, but related, things at once and he’s doing a thousand mental high jumps trying to keep track of it, to make sure that he’s saying the right thing. Which is… difficult when the silence builds and builds, blots out the sound of their breathing and the squeaking plastic and overpowers the cicadas simmering away outside. 

Jake goes to place his strawberry on a tray that’s resting precariously on his bedside table, but when he draws his hand away, the tips of his fingers catch on the lip of the tray and flips the whole thing off. A half empty bowl of chicken soup knocks to the ground. 

“Shit!” 

Jake slides off the bed and turns the bowl the right way up. Thom slides the strawberries on the bed behind him and stands up. He tells Jake he’s going to get some paper towel but Jake grabs him by his leg. A brief, trembling clench before Jake lets go. 

“I’ll just use a shirt or something,” Jake explains.

He pulls out a shirt from his drawers and uses it to soak up the soup, then wipes the bedside table where the soup had dribbled down, his hands shaking the whole time.

Thom licks his lips, feeling like he’s not in his own body watching all of this go down. “Look, it’s… I know it’s sudden… Brooke got into Pilates school and-”

“Pilates school?” Jake repeats as he sits down on the floorboards next to the spill. His voice is directed at the soup when he says, “There’s one here.”

“Yeah… the one in Melbourne, it’s a good one. We’ve got friends there already, and, she wanted a change.” Thom sits down beside Jake, leans his head against the mattress. He sighs internally and unwillingly lets some of it out, like his body’s tired of his mental gymnastics and is forcing him to say what he’s been meaning to say.  “But you should know that this isn’t because of… because of what happened.” 

Jake fidgets with the damp curls on the back of his neck, then draws his knees to his chest.

“Which wasn’t anything,” Thom adds, staring at a painting on Jake’s wall. “I told Brooke it was nothing to worry about.”

“You told her.”

“Yeah, I mean I told her that we’re not doing anything, we’re not like…” He trails off, again faced with not knowing how to explain it or if he should say it and what that would mean and- “Man, we’re just…”

He leaves the suggestion hanging. He kind of really wants Jake to oppose him. To speak honestly. For Jake to fight for what he feels, not for what he believes should be right and honourable. But Jake just hangs his head back against the bed and lolls his face toward Thom to gaze at him, his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed together. In the corner of Thom’s eyes, Jake looks tired.

Of course, Jake doesn’t argue. And Thom should really have guessed this would be how it goes down. He’s known Jake for so long, travelled all over the world with him, has spent ups and downs with him and if there’s one thing he has learned about Jake, it’s that he isn’t a fighter like Brooke. 

“Anyway,” Thom takes a deep breath. “I’ll obviously still come on tour and stuff, but I’ll be flying home to Melbourne now I guess.”

They sit for a while. The smell of cold chicken soup is dampened by the wet shirt. He can’t say for sure if this is going well or not. He told Jake he’s moving, that’s one thing. He tried to convey that nothing would change, hopefully a second thing completed successfully. But what now? They’re just sitting. Time ticking away. And then Jake’s knees angle to one side and bump against Thom’s and he lets it happen. Nothing suss about it. Just what friends do, which is what they are. Which is what Brooke thinks they are. But then Jake’s hand slides across the floor and his fingertips touch Thom’s and Thom has to stop it there. Has to kind of clap the top of jake’s hands with his palm as if he’s just supporting himself as he stands up. Like that touch was an accident, nothing more.

Jake doesn't protest.


	7. Thom

Jake didn’t come to the farewell party. Thom didn’t expect him to, and it doesn’t particularly raise any vocal questions to anyone who knows them, who knows what Brooke thinks of Jake for what he did to Sophie. So things kind of go as best as they can with saying farewell to friends and family before Thom heads off on the international tour and Brooke goes to settle in in their new place. 

By May, when he returns to Australia, he splits ways with Jake, Chris and Hame at the Melbourne international airport and he goes to see his new home in the flesh for the first time. What was empty spaces in the online photos is now expertly decorated by Brooke. Over the four or five months, Brooke sourced unique items of furniture and paintings and rugs and tidbits she found browsing at op shops and antique shops and markets or had been given to them by their artist friends. She’s decked their breezy, light filled apartment in a palette of gold fabrics and dark brown wood and dark greens in the leaves of indoor houseplants. Their light filled, breezy, old stone floored apartment becomes their home.

It’s a home he and Brooke can call theirs, (and their housemates), but distinctly  _ not _ their parental homes or childhood bedrooms. And Thom couldn’t be happier with the transition. Brooke’s happy with her studies and being around her friends and being close to cute little cafes and being able to fill her wardrobe with vintage dresses more nuanced than any article she had found in Perth. And Thom’s able to keep things in his ‘career’, if he can call it that, much the same, too. The international tour went ahead and there’s more dates to fill out the rest of the year and it’s understood, he thinks, that things between him and Jake are still friendly, as they always were, but not too friendly, as they sometimes were. They continue to be bandmates and good mates and from living in different states now, they don’t see each other much outside of touring. It works in a way that Brooke said it would, that Brooke wanted it to, and Thom can’t really complain because it’s so easy, so cruisy, and… he tries to not let Jake’s lyrics chip away at him. 

Jake’s songs play in the back of his head even when he’s away from Jake, even when rehearsals should be the farthest thing from his mind. And sometimes the music flits away and it’s just Jake’s words and all the thing they’ve never said to each other on a vocal tracking addressed to the world. Thom misses him, yeah, he misses Jake. And it is kinda annoying that he has to hold back, check himself that he’s not being ‘too flirty’, as he’s told he can be on the occasion. It’s just… as the months wear on and the new year creeps closer, Thom can’t ignore anymore how much it seems to hurt Jake that Thom stops himself. That they can’t be on tour together and let things happen as they did in the beginning. 

Thom had let outside voices invade him and his way of being, like bamboo waging wars on the Australian landscape, making use of the damp coastal soils and growing where they shouldn’t. Spreading like weeds, thick forests of bamboo that look nice, sound magical when the wind knocks the tall shoots together, but roots infest the ground underneath, as solid as swords, a problem so pervasive that cutting them out is far too difficult. He has to poison the roots, slowly break them down and wait until the bamboo rots from the inside out. So that all that’s left are hollowed out trunks that can fell in a storm brewed by true words spoken back at those that had sown the seeds.

It’s a process of defiance that he lets happen. Maybe he wants the surge of the storm to bring everything down so that he can sort through the ruins and find what’s left, find Jake surviving as he always does somehow. Ideally he wants it without the storm, without the slow-acting poison and without a forest torn down but the bamboo’s not meant to be there. It grows but it doesn’t fit and he loves Brooke but he likes himself better with Jake. Likes that nothing feels wrong even though it is kinda wrong that he lets things happen even though he told Brooke he wouldn’t. 

They find each other after a gig, sweaty and wrecked after a show that they felt was good but the crowd hadn’t taken to it. Thom had seen how it affected Jake and he’d hugged him. Casual and friendly and Jake clings to him, breath heavy and Thom immediately knows what he needs and he finds the privacy to deliver. Raises his chin and kisses Jake in the bathroom of some bar where, beyond, Chris and Hame are drinking beers and who don’t ask any questions when Thom and Jake don’t come back for a while. Don’t question their red faces and plump lips because their own are shiny from beer, but wouldn’t regardless. 

And it goes on like this. Thom lets things happen. Lets himself touch Jake and lets himself kiss Jake and Jake lets him in elsewhere and they don’t talk about it. Never with words, never on Jake’s part. Thom comes up with things when people ask about looks or photos, it’s just how it is. It’s Thom’s personality. He’s affectionate. And things go back to how they were before things  _ should _ have changed. 

Except there’s a mark of difference. A small, minute aspect of Jake that Thom thinks is him trying to be more honest. Or that he’s trying to, at least, with how Jake’s riskier. He’ll touch more of Thom than he used to, especially overseas, he’ll be around Thom in ways that he’s missed, in ways that Brooke limited. But it frustrates Thom because Jake won’t say anything, won’t admit to Thom what’s going on because something has to be said. Thom’s out here playing both sides with Jake and placating Brooke and it’s hard when Brooke explicitly says she wants all of him and Jake relies on the inference of facial expressions and body language to convey meaning. At some point, he’s really going to need Jake to tell him exactly what he wants. 

But it’ll go like this:

Thom will ask, “Do you want me?”

Jake won’t say anything. His mouth could do any kind of shape and no sound will come out except for the moan and the swell in other parts of his body. 

“Then why don’t you say it?” Thom will press. 

“It’s in my songs,” Jake might even say. 

“But that’s you telling the world, not you telling me,” Thom will say. He’ll pull the leather tight and make Jake beg but he wants it to come naturally, for Jake to just, “say the truth for once in your life.”

He’ll never say it. He’ll deflect, he’ll pretend like Thom can read him and that the whole world doesn’t hear the hidden messages in Jake’s lyrics. Thom might drop the pressure on their leatherbound fun as some kind of punishment and it makes Jake beg. 

“Please, please. I want you.”

But he’ll say it because of the apparatus of the game and the high stakes in the pressure release of bedroom-bounded intimacy and Thom just has to accept it. Keep cruising, keep letting things happen based on an interpretation of the physical need and an emotional bond but no spoken contract and he guesses it’s the only way things can continue anyway. Saying the truth out loud means that invasive forest will fell and Thom isn’t even sure he’s ready to clear it all himself. He’s just standing on the border of it, roots turning under the soil like a heartbeat under his feet, a storm forecasted to travel across hemispheres, but it hasn’t hit yet. He still has time. 


	8. the end

Jake spends the first half of 2018 songwriting. He doesn’t get out much. Treats it like a 9-5 job and people tell him he should wait for inspiration but he doesn’t work like this because he can’t find inspiration. He has all the inspiration he’ll ever need. He needs to channel it, refine it and isolate what’s useful and what’s not and the structure’s good for him. Keeps him working, keeps him sane. Keeps his mind busy from missing Thom, too. 

He gets news that he’s going to play Splendour on the Amphitheatre stage, the biggest of the whole festival and he feels proud and joyful because it’s a big deal and it means he’ll get to see Thom sooner rather than later. But everything’s going to change, too, because the music he’s making is bigger and better and he needs more people to translate what’s on disc to stage. It’ll mean more bodies, more eyes, more mouths to judge and gossip but he has to do it. He’ll just need to pick the right people. 

They schedule rehearsals a week before the festival but Thom comes to see him in June. Just a little holiday, but he’s only away from Melbourne a week and Thom’s already out on the verandah on the phone with Brooke. Jake sits inside on the armchair beside a window with a book in hand. The edges of the pane are foggy, the leaves outside on the trees and the bushes and the flowers in his garden glisten in the early morning sunlight. Jake sips at his coffee and he tries not to listen, tries to focus on the book he’s reading but Thom’s baritone voice wedges through the gaps under the windows, sandwiched by Brooke’s voice crackling through Thom’s mobile. 

“Delete the photo?” Thom says, “He’s just teaching me how to play a song.”

“I asked you to stop this and you ----- enabling him.”

“Baby-”

“----- It’s a simple ------ Just delete the photo.”

There’s a creak in the floorboards that span the verandah as Thom sits down on the steps. Jake cranes his neck and peers out of the window and sees Thom hunched over his lap for a moment, then he lays his back and head on the verandah and stretches his legs and feet over the steps. He places his mobile on his chest and taps speaker phone. Jake doesn’t move. 

“It’s gone,” Thom says, staring up at the cobwebs clustering in the curved roof of the verandah. “I liked that photo though.”

“I don’t. I don’t like it, I don’t like him, and I don’t like who you are when you’re around him. You shouldn’t let him do those things he’s-”

“He’s my best friend.”

“Is he? Because it looks like he thinks he’s your boyfriend!”

Thom’s laugh makes Jake sink into his seat. 

“I’m serious! People are getting the wrong idea. My friends keep asking me if we’re in an open relationship! Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is telling them no, and then knowing that they’re seeing the same things as I am online? You can’t be doing that anymore, you’re 24 now, Thom. You’re not a kidding anyone.”

“An open relationship… maybe we could try...”

“ _ We could try?  _ Did you just ask that?? Oh my God, Thomas! I’m sick to death of this! I’m sick to death of this! I’m sick of feeling jealous every time I see you with Jake, I just can’t do it anymore. You have to tell me that you don’t have feelings for him or…”

Jake dares to peek out the window, sees that Thom his one hand covering his face. 

“What am I meant to do?” Thom asks and it sounds so hollow and distant.

“Come back home, please, Thom. Please.”

“Methyl Ethel is my job and it’s not even a real job but it’s all I can do,” Thom says, more to himself. “I love it. I love… doing this.”

It takes her a while to speak, her voice crackling over speakerphone. “Are… are you in love with him?”

Jake grips into the windowsill, fingers going white, his book slides off his lap and into the side crevice of the chair. He can’t hear what Thom says before he’s repeating Brooke’s name.

Jake turns back to face the room. He can hear Thom dialling Brooke’s number again and again, the dialtones ringing across the morning soundscape, cloaked in the cold of winter. He slides off the chair and moves quietly into the kitchen. He doesn’t put the water on to boil until he hears the back door open and shut. 

Thom comes in not too long after. He stands pensively, hands gripping the overhanging edge of the counter. Jake sees the pain on Thom’s face and all he wants to do is envelop Thom in a hug. The kettle clicks done. 

“What happened?” Jake asks well after the steam stops gushing out of the little hole on the kettle lid. 

“She broke up with me,” Thom croaks, “I think.”

“What?”

Thom sits down on the kitchen table, the chair scratching across the tile floor under the suddenness of the movement. 

All at once, Jake feels an intense feeling of relief but brewing in that cauldron is concern and guilt at the source of his thoughts for feeling like this is an opportunity. The opportunity that he’d forsaken the last time Thom was single.

Thom pulls out his phone again, taps a few things then pushes it across the table. “She didn’t like the photo I put up of us from yesterday.”

Thom looks at Jake. Jake chews his lips. 

“I deleted it for her. I deleted the whole thing and I know it won’t mean anything because I’m still gonna--” He catches his forehead in his palm and lets out a ragged sob. 

At that sound, Jake flies around the counter takes Thom’s head to his stomach, wrapping his arms around Thom’s shoulders. 

Thom tries to hold his sobs inside when he says, “I shouldn’t be -- I knew this was coming. I knew it had to -- she wants me to -- I can’t stop, I can’t stop being in love with you.”

It’s not the first time Thom has said that to him. He says it a lot, but this is the first time Jake really feels like he means it. Like it’s so easy to say amongst all of the tragedy and everything else that’s hard to say and hard to lose. Thom lets out another sob and Jake hushes him, pats his hair, presses a kiss into the top of Thom’s head. He pushes out all training thoughts of what this means, what could happen, what Thom will do next and focuses on this moment. He drops to his knees in front of Thom and pushes his head onto Thom’s thighs and wraps his arms around Thom’s waist, his hands rubbing what parts of Thom they can find, soothing, caring. He takes in the sounds that Thom’s stomach makes, the shuddering of Thom’s spine, the heaving of his lungs. 

When Thom’s breathing finds an equilibrium, Jake dares to ask, “Will you go?”

“No,” Thom says so quickly and without hesitation. His hand spreads out over Jake’s shoulder blade, warm, secure, and he adds, “I want to stay here with you.”

  
  


His songs are an apology. To Sophie, to Brooke, to Thom, to everyone he’s ever hurt. He’d always felt like he was a ball of twine. Each loop of string boundtightly together, around and around, and he’d always been nudged or pushed or kicked around but he’d always tried to keep a good hold on the strings, to keep it all neat and tight and together. It’d been Thom who had tugged on the loose end that no one could ever find, tucked away under too many layers. Thom was just playing, but very quickly the play became serious because Jake liked it, needed it, wanted Thom to take hold of the end and pull and never let go. With nothing to keep himself from falling apart, Jake finds out that he was never the string, he was just encased inside it, and unravelling the string didn’t mean losing his sense of self, it meant exposing his true self to the world, the world between himself and Thom. 

Thom’s life unravelled too. Ran a different course to Jake’s. His string was already loose and tangled, it came off the bound in chunks of string and has left Thom sensitive but not raw, contemplative but not unresponsive because he has Jake. Together, they get to rebuild. Reform, reshape. They have the foundation of something beautiful and rich, memories of what they had before when secrecy was a kink and too easily revealed. With nothing left to keep under wraps, they talk better. Tell each other what they couldn’t say when they thought they had to share their bodies and thoughts and emotions between three points of a triangle unjoined by two lines. Jake finds it has taken the elimination of that extra line to make him feel able to be honest because there was no other voice he only heard second hand, telling Thom what to do and when to hold back. There’s no longer a reason to be respectful of someone who doesn’t respect him. He can respect Thom, just Thom, and there’s no longer a reason to hide how he feels too. He’ll never forget the face Thom makes when he tells Thom just how much he means to him. How much he loves him, how much he’s always loved him and always will. It’s healing, for them both. It took a long time but Jake can finally say it, mean it, as he always has in his songs, but mean it face to face.

They make space for each other, they make a home, they make music and art and they make love. And their life paths continue on, stringing out and out, crossing over the borders of states and nations and oceans, together, intertwined.


End file.
